Christmas Morning

The first Christmas present was seeing Anna sitting out by the stockings. Santa dropped her off with the presents. This was our favorite gift of all.

 We started the morning by opening up our stocking. Everything was really chill which was great with the two littles around. We took things at their pace and stopped and enjoyed some of the gifts before moving on.

 

We took a break in the gift getting and ate some eggs and cinnamon rolls. After breakfast and stockings, Belén was worn out so we put her down for a nap. Darin was sick (boo!) and everyone else was exhausted from picking up Anna from the Dulles airport at 1 a.m., except for Shae of course. He watched Frosty while we all rested a bit.

Before everyone fell asleep, Shae saw this present from my parents sitting out with the presents. It took him a couple rounds through the house before he noticed it and started dunking.

We all took a turn...

After we put the gifts in piles, Shae went around and woke everyone up...

...and took his final drinks of water before diving in to the gifts.

Belén opened her first Christmas present ever, from her Great-Grandma Nancy, a Winnie the Pooh talking stuffed animal.

Shae had so many gifts, we all ended up helping him in the end because he just wanted to sit down and play with the ones that he had already opened.

Santa brought the kids the doctor kit that Shae had asked for. He played with it for the rest of the day, Belén sucked on it.

Belén got so excited about this sock monkey from her cousin Rylan. We are trying to make it her attachment item so we've started putting it in bed with her when she sleeps. We'll see if it sticks. 

I got a couple new scarves, some sewing tools, camera tools, sweater, leggings, candles, and a camp chair.

Darin got quite a few new clothing items, a grilling set, a Shell Silverstene book, and some winter stuff.

Everyone else got lots of fun presents as well.

...and then it was done. 

The rest of the day we played, slept some more, ate yummy deli sandwiches and snack food (and pumpkin dump cake, of course). It was a really great morning. I'm so glad that most of my family was able to be together. It's felt like so long since we've been together for a holiday since Anna has been gone the past two Christmases. Darin was pretty sick which wasn't very fun for him, or us, but we still tried our best to enjoy the day despite the illness. The kids had a blast. There is nothing like seeing Christmas through the eyes of a child.